Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Les Grandes Vacances

I was going to write a clever email detailing our first 24 hours in Geneva, Switzerland.  Instead, here are just a few highlights:

Sent the incorrect itinerary to our friend Heather who lives here.  She arrived to meet us on Monday around 11:30am, but we didn't arrive until 3pm or so.  Took a while to figure out how to call her on a pay phone.  Pay phone!  When is the last time you used one of those.

Geneva airport has a French and Swiss side.  Went back and forth between the countries trying to find the right Hertz.  Patrick straddled both countries for a few minutes.

The reservation we had for our rental car didn't exist in the system.  No cars were immediately available, and if we took a car that day, we were going to have to pay close to $1600 for 24 days - and for a small/medium-sized car.  Austin figured out the free wi-fi at the airport and sitting on luggage next to Hertz, reserved and paid for a car to pick up on Tuesday morning.

Finally made contact with Heather and met her!  Stuffed all our luggage and the 5 of us into her car, and went to her Swiss village of Crans.

Had some good local wine from the chateau/winery here in the village of Crans at dinner.

Sophie slept from 8pm to 10:30am.

Patrick woke up at midnight and tossed and turned until around 2am.  He woke up this morning at 8:15am when Austin and I got up to go back to the airport for the rental.  Patrick has a headache, and a fever.  Heather walked down to the pharmacy to get a thermometer and kids' ibuprofen.  He is still pretty docile and not feeling great, but not grouchy.

We might take a boat across Lake Geneva to a French village to stroll around.  No big plans until Patrick feels better...

1 comment:

Meg Malone said...

Oh, poor Patrick- but he is a boy who can straddle two countries and run a fever at the same time. We are finally in Prague! Good to be on the same continent!

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